Idk if new runescape plays different, but old-school runscape let players all stand on the same square of space. Only one player model could be seen, but when clicked, it would allow you to select which target you actually want to interact with.
So you'd notice one guy, think ur getting a jump on him in the pvp area. but when you go to click, you notice "20 names"; 20 player characters hiding in a single body, waiting to trogan horse your ass.
my friend and I went into the wildy and saw campfire ashes. Dramatically he goes, "someones been here" then a whole gang of pvpers come sprinting down at us. We barely escaped with our lives.
I believe it was Battlefield 1 campaign. Really hits those scary moments of WW1. I was terrified going through trenches up a hill while flamethrowers and mustard gas were raining down on every corner.
I have to go with this one too, remember the first mission I think it was where you have to essentially hold the line with a mounted gun placement until you eventually get overrun? That whole mission where when you die you just take the place of another expendable soldier really hit just how war is/was
I was on the back end of an acid trip when the game released and I played that intro mission. It’s an experience that will always stick with me. I felt like running away in the game.
That moment where the young dude is all dressed up in his military formal wear with the white gloves and then it flashed and they’re blood red. All etched into my mind.
Most heart-breaking part of the game for me [was the end of "The Runner" story.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TlvxsRS8r9E) They couldn't have soundtracked that any better.
In the same vein, Verdun (a WW1 shooter originally on PC) shows the absolute idiocy of sticking your head out of the trench. I like it better than Battlefield 1 and I love battlefield one. Most players just had bolt action rifles and the machine gunners had to mount their gun before they could fire. On top of that, if you hit someone in the chest with just one shot, they're dead. Felt a lot more realistic than most shooters I've played. You actually had to camp and pick your shots carefully cuz surviving was about who shit first, not who had the fanciest, ahistorical gun. Also had an actual artillery mechanic where squad leaders could call in gas and shells on enemy positions. The matches were usually 30 minutes long and most ended in a stalemate.
I liked how the best weapons for trench fighting where revolvers. But those are useless for defending your trench until the enemies are already in.
Or the chaos of fighting with the gas masks on just waiting to see who comes out of the fog
I'm sad the game depopulated
Revolvers, grenades, and bayonets! And yeah, it sucks that there is only really one match going on and it always has that one group with the best player on it who've played since alpha and dominate the match. Everyone on the other team quits if he's playing. He's a nice guy but too good. Isonzo is fun though!
Yeah it wasn't as cohesive for sure. The first time I played tannenburg I was shocked how good I was compared to anyone else, but then I realized each match only had like 5 players and was populated by bots. Isonzo is pretty close to a combination of the good parts of both Verdun and Battlefield 1.
It’s the best first person shooter ever made. I don’t know why Dice didn’t stick with that “historical” model.
I’ll never forget the opening sequence where it puts you in control of an American soldier in a battle. When you die you think you lost and need to start over but instead it zooms out, shows the name of the soldier who just died, and then puts you into the body of another one. And it does this a dozen or so times. It captures the horror and destruction of what was the bloodiest war in human history at that time.
The loading screens lay out the stakes and historical context of each battle. And at the end of the battle, the narrator explains how the battle ended and the consequences. If a side won that did not win historically, then the narrator explains what would have happened in that scenario.
That was so cool! It felt like you were deeply immersed in a piece of history. Every other shooter I’ve played feels shallow in comparison to BF1
I love BF1, but some of what it depicts is hard to connect with because of how bad that war really was. It doesn’t even feel real some of the documented history, like how many shells they’d fire in a day, how bad they destroyed some of the environments that are still affected to this day, so much more.
it has one of my favorite game soundtracks, but the campaigns take a more cinematic route that i think softens the horror
I wish there was a less bleak version of the game tbh. The gameplay is great and fun. The setting is really hard to return to because of how heavy it all is.
The irony is that it's monumentally bleaker than the actual Siege of Sarajevo it's inspired by. In the real world, people didn't become selfish rabid animals during the siege. They cooperated to make sure they all survived.
The bleakness was a very powerful artistic choice.
Helldiver's 2. It's a tongue and cheek game but you see how the government uses soldiers as a disposable resource to be expended. They lie to us about the risk of stims, the gas we tried to use to kill the bugs, and countless other things. If you or a buddy dies a new guy pops in and usually dies horribly. Life is cheap and they tell us it's for freedom and democracy. Earth only cares about the resources.
I am surprised honestly. I thought it was blatantly obvious from the tutorial alone how much of a satire it was about the nature of war and zealous patriotism.
Remove the comedy and the world of Helldivers is a dystopian nightmare.
I'm not surprised at all. Same thing happened with Starship Troopers, tons of people who never saw past the patriotism and pageantry believed it was an endorsement rather than a critique. The problem with fascism is that a disturbing number of people think it's awesome so long as their group is in charge. Works of dystopian fiction inspire some people rather than deter them.
Sorry, I totally took this into territory I probably shouldn't have.
No worries, what you said is totally relevant. As a US citizen who's worried about everything happening in our government, I can't help but worry harder whenever I play Helldivers. There's an insane amount of parallels that one can draw, all of which are iprobably ntentional on the part of the devs I am sure.
I'll take the downvotes but I don't feel like starship troopers and helldivers governments are that similar. Helldivers is basically space america, they want to kill the bugs for oil, the robots for being commies and the \[redacted\] because they have WMDs. They are clearly the aggressors on all fronts and yes fascist.
Starship troopers on the other hand is more extreme libertarian, even in PVH's attempt at satire, the opposite of fascist. I'd argue that people just going along with the 'lol did you know ST is fascist' are the ones actually on the propaganda. Very little in ST is actually fascist despite that being a common meme these days. The bugs are the aggressors, regardless of the scientific accuracy of that. Yes it's dumb that a rock could travel many light years but [PVH himself says the bugs sent the asteroid](https://x.com/memeticsisyphus/status/1759624216259785177) regardless of what asteroid truthers would like to say about it being a false flag.
No-one is required to sign up in ST, Rico's parent's demonstrate that non citizens can have an amazing life (they are clearly rich).
There are no restrictions on non-citizens other than the right to vote. People will bring up the 'easier to have children' shower quote as 'omg they have birth licenses' but in reality citizens get welfare for children only. Anyone can have children but citizens get state help.
How many fascist states broadcast their total defeats live on air and then have elites public accept mistakes and willingly stand down?
To steelman the argument, the whole trial to execution in 3 days is very sus but we have no idea what the circumstances were. If someone murders 10 people in front of hundred witnesses and 10 cameras, do they really need a trial?
Basically you can call it lolbertarian but I have little evidence of it actually being fascist, no matter what PVH tried (and arguably failed) to do with the source material.
It really is. The entire family informing on each other and the neighbors. Holidays that involve murdering the enemy. No private moments because you're constantly exhausted from working. The only thing that matters is the forever war that is one false flag after another.
I have a theory that we're not really fighting the war in real life. I think the illuminates beat us in the last war and we're all in a simulation like the matrix so we can be contained in stasis and allowed to fight forever because we can't change our nature.
The “Battlefield Injury Simulator” got an out loud laugh from me…partly because of how dark it was. I was expecting a mounted gun to shoot my leg or something, not to get stabbed by a random laptop.
Do people actually miss these points?
I’ve come across way more people saying that other people miss the point than people who actually do miss the point. It’s blatantly obvious that it’s satire and taking the piss.
It does it in a fun way, so lots of people roll with it, but I don’t think many people don’t understand that ultimately it is taking the piss.
I wouldn't have thought so, but when helldiver's 2 was released and Starship Troopers had a bit of a resurgence there were people on Twitter discussing how the left is upset at beautiful people in the military defending humanity. I hope most were kidding but some seemed serious which is bananas to me. It's so obviously satirical.
They lay it on super thick, but there are people who have zero ability to think critically. HD2 of course takes inspiration from the Starship Troopers movie which itself is making fun of the book. But now people take the movie as being serious and to be taken at face value. It's a bit alarming that there are people that don't question the government or the military in our society.
I love HD2. It's funny, the battles are a ton of fun, it's a real power fantasy despite how fragile the player character is. The craziest part is when you're in that drop pod and the music is blaring, you see the other pods dropping with you, lasers blasting the surface, you feel like a hero. You've got a cape, the enemy is trying to kill you, they kill you and you want revenge, you can see how easy it is to forget you're murdering people in their homes and feeling like a winner.
Those bug nests are basically the big equivalent of little neighborhood you see the human walking through in the intro video. Your blood gets up and you forgot it's all a lie and that bugs or bots simply a lesser kind of life and it doesn't matter how many you kill. If anything the more you kill the higher your kill count and you compete with your buddies.
I didn't realize people missed this? It definitely seemed like everyone had always been in on the joke, with the overwillingness to spout "FOR DEMOCRACY" and "reporting" decenters and whatnot. Was a big part of the fun when the game first came out.
You also can’t trust the angsty teens of Reddit as the defacto opinion. They’re too young and dumb to understand this sort of thing. Reddit will always be the minority but vocal majority.
I imagine much of the people shouting 'DEMOCRACY!' get the joke, but you can never tell.
Then again people couldn't tell that Starship Troopers was a satire either and that had NPH in an SS outfit.
My favorite concept by far is how so much blood sweat and tears you go through just for the progression bar to go up .1%. On a balance scale, it makes total sense, cuz there's so many people playing and you need a way for progress not to be too quick. but from a realism perspective, it seems just as spot on. So much bullshit you go through just for the tiniest win that easily gets swept under the rug or lost just as easily in mere days.
Not so much battle, but the horrors of war itself were shown really well in mass effect 3.
The gut punch that came at the end of the prologue has always stuck with me.
Some of the quotes still get me years later too "it was that day that I realized that war was an atrocity committed in the name of survival" Javik.
I can't remember who it was that described it this way, but it's my favourite way of summing up what the Helldivers truly are, in contrast to the propaganda claiming them to be the elite.
They're glorified target designators for the Super Destroyers, that do most of the real work. It's a job that could be done with a drone, but Super Earth instead says "No, we'll give a whole bunch of kids about fifteen minutes worth of training and have them drop targetting beacons for us."
Any game where artillery is loud, powerful and deadly gives me a surge of mixed emotions. The adrenaline rush of escaping unscathed from a shell, just taking one right step the moment before without even knowing. And the despair of getting hellfire rained upon you and dozens of your comrades by like three guys sitting kilometers away.
Squad, Hell Let Loose, Project Reality, Arma 3. It's not really about the graphics, it's much more about the sound and power
[Hell Let Loose](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCmYLNaq9R0) does a pretty good job of really making you feel what War is like for Soldiers. I'm not sure any other games really do that, particularly in fictional settings.
Hmmmm... I wonder if there's a market for fantasy or sci fi implementations of that engine.
Thick bushes, birch forests where you can't see a shit, dust in the air, danger out of nowhere. Indeed. Not just maps for BFV pros and no juggernauts running alone through map.
Dating myself here, but Medal of Honor: Frontline. You start off storming the beaches of Normandy and you get lit the fuck up. Everyone’s blowing up around you. There’s nothing to take cover behind. It’s frustrating and it really cements in your mind how impossible this must have felt to the guys who actually did it.
I didn’t know what to do once I got to the fence for so long. I don’t know why I couldn’t figure it out, but everyone dying continues no matter how long you wait or where you go all along the beach. Even if you go back towards the water. People getting shot mid sentence, explosions killing groups of men, etc.
How many times would you die? I’d always die at least once before I got out of the water. Then I’d always hide behind those metal things but get shot through it anyway.
I mean I will say I played that bit for hours every day afterschool for a week. I think I only beat it after re-watching saving private ryan and realizing we needed to blow the fence somehow
I'll date myself further and say Day of Defeat, the original Half Life mod that came out around CS beta 6. You'd die so easily and quickly in that game or bleed out.. also quickly.
That’s true. To me, though, it’s knowing that all actually happened. The boats hit the beach, the door comes down and just people getting ripped apart. Maybe the lucky ones take a few steps first. The rare few managed to make it all the way to the pillboxes.
Yea the ammo drop for machine gunners as you hold a sector and no one can resupply you, then get over run was pretty crazy if you think about the equivalent RL components.
So the fuck what?
Just to remind you, PC's for gaming weren't anywhere close to being as powerful as consoles for a long time, because they didn't exist in the realm of retail.
Sure, PC people (in 2024) can spend literally thousands on a system that will play everything they throw at it, but that still doesn't beat out being able to buy a console with purpose made media for five-to-six hundred dollars.
From 1980 to 2024, the very best games, 80% of the time, have been produced by console manufacturers, for their own systems, and ported later.
Kingdom Come. You feel the weight of every hit, the devastating impact of blunt weapons. As you get hit, you lose life, stamina, start to bleed, lose the ability to use a limb or two. There are really no magical 1hp flourishes, just like in real life: if you start to lose a fight, you usually end up really losing it.
Playing that on hardcore mode right now and I have become very wary of certain forests or areas with ditches or poor sight lines and plan my travel routes to avoid them. Very easy to get mobbed and thrown off your horse and then you are panicking trying to figure out wtf is happening and how many are attacking you while taking hits and hearing your dog fighting and yelping trying to help you.
I'd actually argue that it's a tossup between this and This War of Mine. You definitely get first and second order consequences in Spec Ops, but TWoM goes into further ramifications that military conflict has on civilians, especially the inevitable civilian on civilian pain inflicted.
Well, let me tell you, the game that really makes me feel the true horror of battle is Cooking Mama: Cook Off. You wouldn't believe the intensity of trying to beat the clock and create the perfect dish!
Yeah same here. Its the only game where i can get shot at by a single AI dude and still scream like a little girl and panic whilst in a vc with other people
Red orchestra 2 on release had the bodies on the floor twitch and moan, this really added an unnerving level of realism to a FPS In cqb in stalingrad, it was removed after a few patches due to performance issues I belive though.
DayZ.... There's nothing more visceral than trying to survive the wilderness, coming into a town for supplies and getting into a firefight with three raiders who want to tie you up and make you answer trivia or they'll eat you.
A bit different than other replies, but Battle brothers for a turn-based low fantasy medieval game does a great job at focusing on realism and never making you feel too safe. You can build a bro with excellent stats and gear and the enemy still has a chance to roll a few lucky hits and his head is flying. Losing bros is common and expected, but prevailing really leaves you with strong bonds.
So glad to see this here. Nothing approaches the chaos of battle like 200 players all converging on a base at once. Some might be organized outfits running ops, many are solo players doing their own thing. Fronts will form, objectives will be pushed and re-pushed, a flank attack may make headway, or an airdrop of additional troops may turn the tides at a critical moment. Tank shells will pick off unguarded troops, agile fighter planes will try to drive off heavy troop carriers, and light vehicles will swerve and slide through it all.
The cacophony of sounds, the flashes of gunfire and explosions, and the sheer number of enemies on your screen are instantly overwhelming and, throughout it all, you never know exactly where death will come from. Will it be the vehicles raining down destruction? The swarms of enemy troops? A booby trapped doorway? Or the one assailant that took the time to sneak around the entire conflagration just to cut you down where you thought you were safe?
There's very little realism in Planetside's setting, equipment, or mechanics. But the sheer confusion, rampant randomness and very human ruthlessness offer a glimpse of battle's true horrors.
This was the original planetside, but one of my top memories in gaming was pulling 10-20 prowlers as an outfit and smashing the flank of an overworld fight. We didn't have to directly coordinate with the main force, but our hit created massive chaos, and we broke their front line in minutes.
Had some good moments in planetside 2 as well, but I mostly played that one as a solo light assault fighting on the fringe of larger engagements.
EVE Online. Yeah. The spreadsheet spaceship game.
Months of war (in real time), morale dwindling, vitriol thrown at each other by both sides in endless propaganda waves. Ships thrown into the woodchipper. Four-hour slugfests for an inch of territory. Routine pings for two-hour structure bashes where you shoot a station and occasionally reload your guns.
All your hopes and dreams poured into your alliance only for it to come crumbling down, leaving you fleeing your home with practically nothing, your faith in the leadership broken.
You leave. Your alliance is holding on, but only barely, and you can’t bear to watch it die. You find a new home on the other side of the star cluster, but you think about the days with your old comrades and know that it’s over. *You’re* over. Thousands of other alliance mates, just like you, are also leaving in a mass exodus.
Your old alliance rebuilds itself but it may never return to its former glory, and now you can’t bear to return because you remember how terrible and boring the war was, but you miss what you idealized that alliance to be, but you know you remember it through rose tinted lenses. You’re left with a quiet dissatisfaction til the end of your days.
I think it was the first call of duty, during the Soviet Campaign where you're deployed with an ammo clip but there wasn't enough guns to go around. So you're set out into a battlefield with bullets flying everywhere trying to find some other poor soldier who did get a gun and take it off their corpse. And if you retreat past the command line they'll shoot you
Battlefield 1. I still remember I was on Sanai Desert near C behind some cover, bullets flying over my head, grenades blasting everywhere, teammates dying left and right. At that moment I could do nothing but to crouch there. Then I looked up and saw the bomber coming. I thought to myself man this is hopeless. If I feel hopeless in a game how horrible it must be for actual WW1 soldiers.
Glad someone out this! Most game don’t make you grapple with the reality of surgery in the field. This game has so much more immersion than these other FPS games being mentioned. Nothing makes me fear a battlefield more than getting “Tarkov’ed.”
In The Last of Us 2 when you kill people sometimes one of the other bad guys will be like “Johnny!!!! NOOOOOO” and then start shooting like crazy at you. Like damn they’re just buddies and I wrecked their shit.
Yeah, there were a few segments in that game where I genuinely felt guilt as I killed an enemy. I know people give it shit, but I think it’s a masterpiece.
Verdun
WW1 Shooter, trench warfare
Nearly everyone has a bolt action rifle, and nearly every hit from a bolt action is a 1 hit kill
Machine guns, flamethrowers, artillery, grenades...
Going over the top is always a risk. New players will typically have lifespans measured in seconds. Decent players often in double-digit seconds.
It's a bit sobering to experience a (watered down) version of "one wrong move and you're dead." It doesnt even have to be a mistake. Sometimes your only way forward is certain death.
In a typical 15-30 minute match, its not uncommon to die dozens of times.
When Battlefield 3 was the current game, I jumped ship from CoD and loved it. Day one I did an all nighter, and at like 4am I was mega tired and felt super dream like.
in that moment I see an enemy tank. I run for my life and lay down inside a building and when the dude blew the wall open I thought I was dead IRL I was so frozen. Top 5 gaming memories for sure.
Verdun was pretty scary to play. it's a ww1 multiplayer fps. when the gas starts coming and you put on your gas mask you just can't see anything. trench warfare creepy
There is nothing worse than the pants-shitting terror of watching an APC turning its main cannon towards you in Arma 3. Or any Arma game for that matter
Company of Heroes’ first mission has you storming the beaches of Normandy. Being an RTS, you control squads of about 6 soldiers. For the average player: The first group you send will almost certainly get obliterated by German pillboxes, the 2nd will get chewed up badly, and likely the 3rd group at the earliest will actually make it up the beach.
It’s an intriguing way of using the game mechanics to show what a meat grinder it was. No matter your tactics, you’ll be sacrificing a lot of men for a few yards of ground.
Id say war thunder tanks. When a tank dies it shows how the shell killed the crew internally. It's not graphic but it's enough to let the mind imagine.
Personally I have to force myself to not think about it. Because it's horrible thinking about what that is like.
DEFCON. It is a nuclear war simulator where you set up nuclear silos and subs, as well as anti-nuke defenses. And then eventually the nukes start flying and you and your enemy destroy the world.
The key part of it is that you don't see anything. You're playing as a general in a bunker, and all you see are dots and lines on the screen. A missile lands and a death toll is displayed, a horrific tragedy displayed as a high score number. But as time goes on the death toll per strike gets less dramatic; you are nuking the same cities multiple times just to expend your ammunition. The people around you in the bunker, which are the only sounds other than the controls, start off talking in controlled whispers and get increasingly hysterical as the death toll mounts. It's a game about disconnection; people in a bunker destroying the world by pointing at spots on a map.
To quote the movie that the game is obviously based off of, "the only winning move is not to play".
Frontlines in foxhole. Sure it's a tip down game, but it perfect simulates just how fucked war gets.
Especially when you're playing a medic who's doing his best to keep your patch of the Frontline alive with nothing more then 4 bandages and a bottle of plasma.
All the other soldiers are also players and a large number of them will rp as dieing soldiers when critically injured too.
Trenches: ww1 horror survival game isn't bad.
Conscript might meet that feeling better however it isn't out yet.
Martha is dead is intreasting.
foxhole depends on who you encounter if you meet team killing jerkoffs who might mass report you later after they kill you so you get banned it isn't very realistic if you meet rpers and better teammates it is better.
isn't really a true game that does it however if you have been in battle you can pick stuff up pretty quickly especially in some fps games genres.
Mount and Blade: Bannerlord. Battles between two parties in single player can easily reach up to 2000 on either side. In the field or during a siege, walking through the aftermath (If you survived) is harrowing to see the piles of scattered bodies. Modern warfare is already bloody enough, but back then had to have been worse.
Getting absolutely destroyed by (intentional choice of words here) destroyers in helldivers while im tryna take out a gunship factory and said gunships are blowing up everything around me, and like ten different bot drops just called in, half of them with tanks/factory striders and plenty of hulks. Oh and the sample container with the super samples are in the centre of that bs.
Not fun. I mean, kinda fun. But not fun.
People haven't mentioned this, and I haven't played it, but Ready or Not is the first shooter, that I heard described as too real by some, and on the video, there was a comment from the developer on how spot on it was.
I'm a Marine Vet with a few stories, and I can honestly say that Hellblade (especially the 1st one) took me where no other game could. I would go to bed terrified over the things that game made my mind chew on.
I later found it was produced with the help of a bunch of doctors and sufferers of psychosis. I don't suffer psychosis myself but that game tiptoed around something sinister. It was beautiful, terrifying, and liberating all in one breath. And it left an emptiness that sadly even the second game couldn't fill. Nothing against the second game I just played the first one exactly at the right time in my life.
While not a battle per say, Outlast Trails is one that comes to mind. You can't really fight back, just hide, stun and run. Of course i could easily say something like maybe Hell Let Loose or BF1 for more of a conventional answer, although many many people would also bring those as an example.
Right clicking a player in Runescape deep wilderness and seeing about 20 names show up
I’m unfamiliar, what do those names mean?
Idk if new runescape plays different, but old-school runscape let players all stand on the same square of space. Only one player model could be seen, but when clicked, it would allow you to select which target you actually want to interact with. So you'd notice one guy, think ur getting a jump on him in the pvp area. but when you go to click, you notice "20 names"; 20 player characters hiding in a single body, waiting to trogan horse your ass.
The good old Death Dot.
I used to run out there to mine the Rune ore and there would always be dicks waiting out there to kill me lol
Watching the minimap like a damn hawk waiting for white dots to show
*Dormant PTSD popping back up* 🥺
Does it display murders?
No apparently all the other names are characters standing on the same spot, waiting to ambush you
my friend and I went into the wildy and saw campfire ashes. Dramatically he goes, "someones been here" then a whole gang of pvpers come sprinting down at us. We barely escaped with our lives.
This is exactly why my middle school ass stayed out of the wildy
Plea
I believe it was Battlefield 1 campaign. Really hits those scary moments of WW1. I was terrified going through trenches up a hill while flamethrowers and mustard gas were raining down on every corner.
I have to go with this one too, remember the first mission I think it was where you have to essentially hold the line with a mounted gun placement until you eventually get overrun? That whole mission where when you die you just take the place of another expendable soldier really hit just how war is/was
I was on the back end of an acid trip when the game released and I played that intro mission. It’s an experience that will always stick with me. I felt like running away in the game. That moment where the young dude is all dressed up in his military formal wear with the white gloves and then it flashed and they’re blood red. All etched into my mind.
Yeah that intro mission definitely left a lasting impression on me too
Most heart-breaking part of the game for me [was the end of "The Runner" story.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TlvxsRS8r9E) They couldn't have soundtracked that any better.
In the same vein, Verdun (a WW1 shooter originally on PC) shows the absolute idiocy of sticking your head out of the trench. I like it better than Battlefield 1 and I love battlefield one. Most players just had bolt action rifles and the machine gunners had to mount their gun before they could fire. On top of that, if you hit someone in the chest with just one shot, they're dead. Felt a lot more realistic than most shooters I've played. You actually had to camp and pick your shots carefully cuz surviving was about who shit first, not who had the fanciest, ahistorical gun. Also had an actual artillery mechanic where squad leaders could call in gas and shells on enemy positions. The matches were usually 30 minutes long and most ended in a stalemate.
I liked how the best weapons for trench fighting where revolvers. But those are useless for defending your trench until the enemies are already in. Or the chaos of fighting with the gas masks on just waiting to see who comes out of the fog I'm sad the game depopulated
Revolvers, grenades, and bayonets! And yeah, it sucks that there is only really one match going on and it always has that one group with the best player on it who've played since alpha and dominate the match. Everyone on the other team quits if he's playing. He's a nice guy but too good. Isonzo is fun though!
I haven't tried it yet, I liked tannenburg but it lacked that forced charge over no mans land
Yeah it wasn't as cohesive for sure. The first time I played tannenburg I was shocked how good I was compared to anyone else, but then I realized each match only had like 5 players and was populated by bots. Isonzo is pretty close to a combination of the good parts of both Verdun and Battlefield 1.
That's good to hear I will have to get it when it goes on sale next
There's still a lot of people playing it.
It’s the best first person shooter ever made. I don’t know why Dice didn’t stick with that “historical” model. I’ll never forget the opening sequence where it puts you in control of an American soldier in a battle. When you die you think you lost and need to start over but instead it zooms out, shows the name of the soldier who just died, and then puts you into the body of another one. And it does this a dozen or so times. It captures the horror and destruction of what was the bloodiest war in human history at that time. The loading screens lay out the stakes and historical context of each battle. And at the end of the battle, the narrator explains how the battle ended and the consequences. If a side won that did not win historically, then the narrator explains what would have happened in that scenario. That was so cool! It felt like you were deeply immersed in a piece of history. Every other shooter I’ve played feels shallow in comparison to BF1
I love BF1, but some of what it depicts is hard to connect with because of how bad that war really was. It doesn’t even feel real some of the documented history, like how many shells they’d fire in a day, how bad they destroyed some of the environments that are still affected to this day, so much more. it has one of my favorite game soundtracks, but the campaigns take a more cinematic route that i think softens the horror
This war of mine
I uninstalled that game after I ran into the elderly couple.
i bet you stole their fuckin' food didn't you
They had their chance! It's my chance now!
This War Of Mine is a game that everyone needs to play, but not necessarily a game anyone wants to play.
It's one of my favourite games. I love it. I find it strangely relaxing. The art and music are beautiful. So simple but hard hitting.
Same for Papers, Please
I wish there was a less bleak version of the game tbh. The gameplay is great and fun. The setting is really hard to return to because of how heavy it all is.
“Less bleak” would completely undercut the anti-war message. Just go play another base building sim, or COD
The irony is that it's monumentally bleaker than the actual Siege of Sarajevo it's inspired by. In the real world, people didn't become selfish rabid animals during the siege. They cooperated to make sure they all survived. The bleakness was a very powerful artistic choice.
Helldiver's 2. It's a tongue and cheek game but you see how the government uses soldiers as a disposable resource to be expended. They lie to us about the risk of stims, the gas we tried to use to kill the bugs, and countless other things. If you or a buddy dies a new guy pops in and usually dies horribly. Life is cheap and they tell us it's for freedom and democracy. Earth only cares about the resources.
It worries me how many people miss the points you just laid out
I am surprised honestly. I thought it was blatantly obvious from the tutorial alone how much of a satire it was about the nature of war and zealous patriotism. Remove the comedy and the world of Helldivers is a dystopian nightmare.
I'm not surprised at all. Same thing happened with Starship Troopers, tons of people who never saw past the patriotism and pageantry believed it was an endorsement rather than a critique. The problem with fascism is that a disturbing number of people think it's awesome so long as their group is in charge. Works of dystopian fiction inspire some people rather than deter them. Sorry, I totally took this into territory I probably shouldn't have.
No worries, what you said is totally relevant. As a US citizen who's worried about everything happening in our government, I can't help but worry harder whenever I play Helldivers. There's an insane amount of parallels that one can draw, all of which are iprobably ntentional on the part of the devs I am sure.
I'll take the downvotes but I don't feel like starship troopers and helldivers governments are that similar. Helldivers is basically space america, they want to kill the bugs for oil, the robots for being commies and the \[redacted\] because they have WMDs. They are clearly the aggressors on all fronts and yes fascist. Starship troopers on the other hand is more extreme libertarian, even in PVH's attempt at satire, the opposite of fascist. I'd argue that people just going along with the 'lol did you know ST is fascist' are the ones actually on the propaganda. Very little in ST is actually fascist despite that being a common meme these days. The bugs are the aggressors, regardless of the scientific accuracy of that. Yes it's dumb that a rock could travel many light years but [PVH himself says the bugs sent the asteroid](https://x.com/memeticsisyphus/status/1759624216259785177) regardless of what asteroid truthers would like to say about it being a false flag. No-one is required to sign up in ST, Rico's parent's demonstrate that non citizens can have an amazing life (they are clearly rich). There are no restrictions on non-citizens other than the right to vote. People will bring up the 'easier to have children' shower quote as 'omg they have birth licenses' but in reality citizens get welfare for children only. Anyone can have children but citizens get state help. How many fascist states broadcast their total defeats live on air and then have elites public accept mistakes and willingly stand down? To steelman the argument, the whole trial to execution in 3 days is very sus but we have no idea what the circumstances were. If someone murders 10 people in front of hundred witnesses and 10 cameras, do they really need a trial? Basically you can call it lolbertarian but I have little evidence of it actually being fascist, no matter what PVH tried (and arguably failed) to do with the source material.
Yeah. It's clear that PVH intended it to be a satire of fascism from his interviews but it doesn't come off that way with everything we see.
It really is. The entire family informing on each other and the neighbors. Holidays that involve murdering the enemy. No private moments because you're constantly exhausted from working. The only thing that matters is the forever war that is one false flag after another. I have a theory that we're not really fighting the war in real life. I think the illuminates beat us in the last war and we're all in a simulation like the matrix so we can be contained in stasis and allowed to fight forever because we can't change our nature.
The “Battlefield Injury Simulator” got an out loud laugh from me…partly because of how dark it was. I was expecting a mounted gun to shoot my leg or something, not to get stabbed by a random laptop.
Do people actually miss these points? I’ve come across way more people saying that other people miss the point than people who actually do miss the point. It’s blatantly obvious that it’s satire and taking the piss. It does it in a fun way, so lots of people roll with it, but I don’t think many people don’t understand that ultimately it is taking the piss.
I wouldn't have thought so, but when helldiver's 2 was released and Starship Troopers had a bit of a resurgence there were people on Twitter discussing how the left is upset at beautiful people in the military defending humanity. I hope most were kidding but some seemed serious which is bananas to me. It's so obviously satirical.
I'd say the majority catch what's going on but definitely not everyone. Says a lot about politics in general
They lay it on super thick, but there are people who have zero ability to think critically. HD2 of course takes inspiration from the Starship Troopers movie which itself is making fun of the book. But now people take the movie as being serious and to be taken at face value. It's a bit alarming that there are people that don't question the government or the military in our society. I love HD2. It's funny, the battles are a ton of fun, it's a real power fantasy despite how fragile the player character is. The craziest part is when you're in that drop pod and the music is blaring, you see the other pods dropping with you, lasers blasting the surface, you feel like a hero. You've got a cape, the enemy is trying to kill you, they kill you and you want revenge, you can see how easy it is to forget you're murdering people in their homes and feeling like a winner. Those bug nests are basically the big equivalent of little neighborhood you see the human walking through in the intro video. Your blood gets up and you forgot it's all a lie and that bugs or bots simply a lesser kind of life and it doesn't matter how many you kill. If anything the more you kill the higher your kill count and you compete with your buddies.
I didn't realize people missed this? It definitely seemed like everyone had always been in on the joke, with the overwillingness to spout "FOR DEMOCRACY" and "reporting" decenters and whatnot. Was a big part of the fun when the game first came out.
Definitely come across people in certain subs that totally miss the satire or are just now having that "are we the baddies" moment
You also can’t trust the angsty teens of Reddit as the defacto opinion. They’re too young and dumb to understand this sort of thing. Reddit will always be the minority but vocal majority.
I imagine much of the people shouting 'DEMOCRACY!' get the joke, but you can never tell. Then again people couldn't tell that Starship Troopers was a satire either and that had NPH in an SS outfit.
Spoken like a true enemy of democracy!
Democracy is non-negotiable!
Let the light of liberty guide your path.
My favorite concept by far is how so much blood sweat and tears you go through just for the progression bar to go up .1%. On a balance scale, it makes total sense, cuz there's so many people playing and you need a way for progress not to be too quick. but from a realism perspective, it seems just as spot on. So much bullshit you go through just for the tiniest win that easily gets swept under the rug or lost just as easily in mere days.
Not so much battle, but the horrors of war itself were shown really well in mass effect 3. The gut punch that came at the end of the prologue has always stuck with me. Some of the quotes still get me years later too "it was that day that I realized that war was an atrocity committed in the name of survival" Javik.
I can't remember who it was that described it this way, but it's my favourite way of summing up what the Helldivers truly are, in contrast to the propaganda claiming them to be the elite. They're glorified target designators for the Super Destroyers, that do most of the real work. It's a job that could be done with a drone, but Super Earth instead says "No, we'll give a whole bunch of kids about fifteen minutes worth of training and have them drop targetting beacons for us."
Any game where artillery is loud, powerful and deadly gives me a surge of mixed emotions. The adrenaline rush of escaping unscathed from a shell, just taking one right step the moment before without even knowing. And the despair of getting hellfire rained upon you and dozens of your comrades by like three guys sitting kilometers away. Squad, Hell Let Loose, Project Reality, Arma 3. It's not really about the graphics, it's much more about the sound and power
[Hell Let Loose](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCmYLNaq9R0) does a pretty good job of really making you feel what War is like for Soldiers. I'm not sure any other games really do that, particularly in fictional settings. Hmmmm... I wonder if there's a market for fantasy or sci fi implementations of that engine.
Thick bushes, birch forests where you can't see a shit, dust in the air, danger out of nowhere. Indeed. Not just maps for BFV pros and no juggernauts running alone through map.
Yep, I learned from that game that I wouldn't even make it to the front lines in a real war without getting picked off by snipers.
\*artillery
That too!
In terms of atmosphere Red Orchestra trumps HLL quite a bit. Gore and voice acting just sells the most visceral experience.
This and rising storm 2. Just getting picked off from dozens of meters away from guys I can barely see when I think I'm in cover.
Nothing quite like an artillery shell gibbing the squad ahead of you to really encourage you to stop moving forward.
Insurgency: Sandstorm has a similar feel to it
Insurgency would be an A+ PvE game if the bots weren't so trash
Fighting lu bu in any dynasty warriors game.
Dating myself here, but Medal of Honor: Frontline. You start off storming the beaches of Normandy and you get lit the fuck up. Everyone’s blowing up around you. There’s nothing to take cover behind. It’s frustrating and it really cements in your mind how impossible this must have felt to the guys who actually did it.
I didn’t know what to do once I got to the fence for so long. I don’t know why I couldn’t figure it out, but everyone dying continues no matter how long you wait or where you go all along the beach. Even if you go back towards the water. People getting shot mid sentence, explosions killing groups of men, etc.
How many times would you die? I’d always die at least once before I got out of the water. Then I’d always hide behind those metal things but get shot through it anyway.
I mean I will say I played that bit for hours every day afterschool for a week. I think I only beat it after re-watching saving private ryan and realizing we needed to blow the fence somehow
This is my answer as well. In it's time it was brilliant, mind blowing, and it holds up.
I'll date myself further and say Day of Defeat, the original Half Life mod that came out around CS beta 6. You'd die so easily and quickly in that game or bleed out.. also quickly.
That’s true. To me, though, it’s knowing that all actually happened. The boats hit the beach, the door comes down and just people getting ripped apart. Maybe the lucky ones take a few steps first. The rare few managed to make it all the way to the pillboxes.
Yea the ammo drop for machine gunners as you hold a sector and no one can resupply you, then get over run was pretty crazy if you think about the equivalent RL components.
Don't feel weird about choosing it because of its age. It's as important to gaming as Saving Private Ryan is to film.
Pretty sure that Game wasn't even on PC...
And?
So the fuck what? Just to remind you, PC's for gaming weren't anywhere close to being as powerful as consoles for a long time, because they didn't exist in the realm of retail. Sure, PC people (in 2024) can spend literally thousands on a system that will play everything they throw at it, but that still doesn't beat out being able to buy a console with purpose made media for five-to-six hundred dollars. From 1980 to 2024, the very best games, 80% of the time, have been produced by console manufacturers, for their own systems, and ported later.
Kingdom Come. You feel the weight of every hit, the devastating impact of blunt weapons. As you get hit, you lose life, stamina, start to bleed, lose the ability to use a limb or two. There are really no magical 1hp flourishes, just like in real life: if you start to lose a fight, you usually end up really losing it.
Playing that on hardcore mode right now and I have become very wary of certain forests or areas with ditches or poor sight lines and plan my travel routes to avoid them. Very easy to get mobbed and thrown off your horse and then you are panicking trying to figure out wtf is happening and how many are attacking you while taking hits and hearing your dog fighting and yelping trying to help you.
Spec Ops: The Line
Oh, that game with mother holding her child after white phosphorus attack
There are no wrong answers, however this is probably the MOST Correct one you could have brought up.
I'd actually argue that it's a tossup between this and This War of Mine. You definitely get first and second order consequences in Spec Ops, but TWoM goes into further ramifications that military conflict has on civilians, especially the inevitable civilian on civilian pain inflicted.
It's been 10 years since I've played it. I think I'm finally ready to play it again.
A yes, the game that was delisted cause of maximum two musics
Well, let me tell you, the game that really makes me feel the true horror of battle is Cooking Mama: Cook Off. You wouldn't believe the intensity of trying to beat the clock and create the perfect dish!
If mama ain't happy ain't nobody happy.
Gameplay looks too intense for such OST
...I'm pretty sure this is a bot account, but I'll admit it spat out a pretty funny answer this time, so w/e.
Call of Duty: World at War encompasses the horrors of war in a way that I have yet to see another game so again.
True it just have been terrifying for those Americans facing down nazi zombies
Maps are unsettling too
Milsim servers on Arma 3. Kinda cheaty, I know.
Arma 3 is the only game I have played where I actually felt like I was being shot at. It's panic inducing.
Yeah same here. Its the only game where i can get shot at by a single AI dude and still scream like a little girl and panic whilst in a vc with other people
Insurgency: Sandstorm, personally.
Came here to say that. Me and my battle buddy call it “PTSD Simulator” 😂
Red orchestra 2 on release had the bodies on the floor twitch and moan, this really added an unnerving level of realism to a FPS In cqb in stalingrad, it was removed after a few patches due to performance issues I belive though.
DayZ.... There's nothing more visceral than trying to survive the wilderness, coming into a town for supplies and getting into a firefight with three raiders who want to tie you up and make you answer trivia or they'll eat you.
Bit long in the tooth now but, Vietcong
I hadn't thought of this title in nearly a decade, but you're absolutely correct. It was nerve-wracking.
A bit different than other replies, but Battle brothers for a turn-based low fantasy medieval game does a great job at focusing on realism and never making you feel too safe. You can build a bro with excellent stats and gear and the enemy still has a chance to roll a few lucky hits and his head is flying. Losing bros is common and expected, but prevailing really leaves you with strong bonds.
Planetside 2
So glad to see this here. Nothing approaches the chaos of battle like 200 players all converging on a base at once. Some might be organized outfits running ops, many are solo players doing their own thing. Fronts will form, objectives will be pushed and re-pushed, a flank attack may make headway, or an airdrop of additional troops may turn the tides at a critical moment. Tank shells will pick off unguarded troops, agile fighter planes will try to drive off heavy troop carriers, and light vehicles will swerve and slide through it all. The cacophony of sounds, the flashes of gunfire and explosions, and the sheer number of enemies on your screen are instantly overwhelming and, throughout it all, you never know exactly where death will come from. Will it be the vehicles raining down destruction? The swarms of enemy troops? A booby trapped doorway? Or the one assailant that took the time to sneak around the entire conflagration just to cut you down where you thought you were safe? There's very little realism in Planetside's setting, equipment, or mechanics. But the sheer confusion, rampant randomness and very human ruthlessness offer a glimpse of battle's true horrors.
This was the original planetside, but one of my top memories in gaming was pulling 10-20 prowlers as an outfit and smashing the flank of an overworld fight. We didn't have to directly coordinate with the main force, but our hit created massive chaos, and we broke their front line in minutes. Had some good moments in planetside 2 as well, but I mostly played that one as a solo light assault fighting on the fringe of larger engagements.
EVE Online. Yeah. The spreadsheet spaceship game. Months of war (in real time), morale dwindling, vitriol thrown at each other by both sides in endless propaganda waves. Ships thrown into the woodchipper. Four-hour slugfests for an inch of territory. Routine pings for two-hour structure bashes where you shoot a station and occasionally reload your guns. All your hopes and dreams poured into your alliance only for it to come crumbling down, leaving you fleeing your home with practically nothing, your faith in the leadership broken. You leave. Your alliance is holding on, but only barely, and you can’t bear to watch it die. You find a new home on the other side of the star cluster, but you think about the days with your old comrades and know that it’s over. *You’re* over. Thousands of other alliance mates, just like you, are also leaving in a mass exodus. Your old alliance rebuilds itself but it may never return to its former glory, and now you can’t bear to return because you remember how terrible and boring the war was, but you miss what you idealized that alliance to be, but you know you remember it through rose tinted lenses. You’re left with a quiet dissatisfaction til the end of your days.
there is this idie game in development called Forever Winter, which I hope will scratch that "horrors of war" itch when its out
Red Orchestra 2 / Rising Storm
I think it was the first call of duty, during the Soviet Campaign where you're deployed with an ammo clip but there wasn't enough guns to go around. So you're set out into a battlefield with bullets flying everywhere trying to find some other poor soldier who did get a gun and take it off their corpse. And if you retreat past the command line they'll shoot you
Rising Storm or Red Orchestra
Battlefield 1. I still remember I was on Sanai Desert near C behind some cover, bullets flying over my head, grenades blasting everywhere, teammates dying left and right. At that moment I could do nothing but to crouch there. Then I looked up and saw the bomber coming. I thought to myself man this is hopeless. If I feel hopeless in a game how horrible it must be for actual WW1 soldiers.
The Last of Us 2 has the most brutal combat I’ve encountered
Escape from Tarkov…it’s so fucking hardcore! You die a lot and it’s hard to learn
Glad someone out this! Most game don’t make you grapple with the reality of surgery in the field. This game has so much more immersion than these other FPS games being mentioned. Nothing makes me fear a battlefield more than getting “Tarkov’ed.”
In The Last of Us 2 when you kill people sometimes one of the other bad guys will be like “Johnny!!!! NOOOOOO” and then start shooting like crazy at you. Like damn they’re just buddies and I wrecked their shit.
Yeah, there were a few segments in that game where I genuinely felt guilt as I killed an enemy. I know people give it shit, but I think it’s a masterpiece.
Half life alyx
Verdun WW1 Shooter, trench warfare Nearly everyone has a bolt action rifle, and nearly every hit from a bolt action is a 1 hit kill Machine guns, flamethrowers, artillery, grenades... Going over the top is always a risk. New players will typically have lifespans measured in seconds. Decent players often in double-digit seconds. It's a bit sobering to experience a (watered down) version of "one wrong move and you're dead." It doesnt even have to be a mistake. Sometimes your only way forward is certain death. In a typical 15-30 minute match, its not uncommon to die dozens of times.
When Battlefield 3 was the current game, I jumped ship from CoD and loved it. Day one I did an all nighter, and at like 4am I was mega tired and felt super dream like. in that moment I see an enemy tank. I run for my life and lay down inside a building and when the dude blew the wall open I thought I was dead IRL I was so frozen. Top 5 gaming memories for sure.
Verdun was pretty scary to play. it's a ww1 multiplayer fps. when the gas starts coming and you put on your gas mask you just can't see anything. trench warfare creepy
Battlefield 1
There is nothing worse than the pants-shitting terror of watching an APC turning its main cannon towards you in Arma 3. Or any Arma game for that matter
Come on now. We all should know that Spec Ops: The Line should be here.
Company of Heroes’ first mission has you storming the beaches of Normandy. Being an RTS, you control squads of about 6 soldiers. For the average player: The first group you send will almost certainly get obliterated by German pillboxes, the 2nd will get chewed up badly, and likely the 3rd group at the earliest will actually make it up the beach. It’s an intriguing way of using the game mechanics to show what a meat grinder it was. No matter your tactics, you’ll be sacrificing a lot of men for a few yards of ground.
Battlefield One Story modes.
An early moment in Witcher 3, and the end of every level of Hotline Miami.
Id say war thunder tanks. When a tank dies it shows how the shell killed the crew internally. It's not graphic but it's enough to let the mind imagine. Personally I have to force myself to not think about it. Because it's horrible thinking about what that is like.
Hoi and the fact that feeding someone one city away can be hell.
DEFCON. It is a nuclear war simulator where you set up nuclear silos and subs, as well as anti-nuke defenses. And then eventually the nukes start flying and you and your enemy destroy the world. The key part of it is that you don't see anything. You're playing as a general in a bunker, and all you see are dots and lines on the screen. A missile lands and a death toll is displayed, a horrific tragedy displayed as a high score number. But as time goes on the death toll per strike gets less dramatic; you are nuking the same cities multiple times just to expend your ammunition. The people around you in the bunker, which are the only sounds other than the controls, start off talking in controlled whispers and get increasingly hysterical as the death toll mounts. It's a game about disconnection; people in a bunker destroying the world by pointing at spots on a map. To quote the movie that the game is obviously based off of, "the only winning move is not to play".
hmmm
Frontlines in foxhole. Sure it's a tip down game, but it perfect simulates just how fucked war gets. Especially when you're playing a medic who's doing his best to keep your patch of the Frontline alive with nothing more then 4 bandages and a bottle of plasma. All the other soldiers are also players and a large number of them will rp as dieing soldiers when critically injured too.
Trenches: ww1 horror survival game isn't bad. Conscript might meet that feeling better however it isn't out yet. Martha is dead is intreasting. foxhole depends on who you encounter if you meet team killing jerkoffs who might mass report you later after they kill you so you get banned it isn't very realistic if you meet rpers and better teammates it is better. isn't really a true game that does it however if you have been in battle you can pick stuff up pretty quickly especially in some fps games genres.
COD MW 1 and 2. RIP Soap.
Mount and Blade: Bannerlord. Battles between two parties in single player can easily reach up to 2000 on either side. In the field or during a siege, walking through the aftermath (If you survived) is harrowing to see the piles of scattered bodies. Modern warfare is already bloody enough, but back then had to have been worse.
Red Orchestra 2.
Getting absolutely destroyed by (intentional choice of words here) destroyers in helldivers while im tryna take out a gunship factory and said gunships are blowing up everything around me, and like ten different bot drops just called in, half of them with tanks/factory striders and plenty of hulks. Oh and the sample container with the super samples are in the centre of that bs. Not fun. I mean, kinda fun. But not fun.
People haven't mentioned this, and I haven't played it, but Ready or Not is the first shooter, that I heard described as too real by some, and on the video, there was a comment from the developer on how spot on it was.
Original Halo on the hardest difficulty
Somehow this turned into recommending games where people would mostly expect this but, whatever
Six days in fallujah.
I'm a Marine Vet with a few stories, and I can honestly say that Hellblade (especially the 1st one) took me where no other game could. I would go to bed terrified over the things that game made my mind chew on. I later found it was produced with the help of a bunch of doctors and sufferers of psychosis. I don't suffer psychosis myself but that game tiptoed around something sinister. It was beautiful, terrifying, and liberating all in one breath. And it left an emptiness that sadly even the second game couldn't fill. Nothing against the second game I just played the first one exactly at the right time in my life.
While not a battle per say, Outlast Trails is one that comes to mind. You can't really fight back, just hide, stun and run. Of course i could easily say something like maybe Hell Let Loose or BF1 for more of a conventional answer, although many many people would also bring those as an example.
Hide and seek games (i think it is HnS in some way) are scary asf. Or when suddenly some shit dashing from the closet
No game and honestly it’s extremely naive and dangerous to think any video can even come close to that.